Modern transit customers demand greater choice of payment options, fare media, and purchasing channels, while still requiring a user friendly experience.
Meeting these demands challenges transit agencies to evolve systems, processes and business models. Enter the need for innovation. In order to transform, it's critical agencies create a strong foundation for the future of fare collection by leveraging evolving technologies.
Ticket vending machines can help you take the first steps, but adopting smart card and mobile payments will be essential to to create a modern and scalable payments system.
Here are some of the trending techs and strategies in-play throughout transit systems around the world:
Ticket Vending Machines (TVMs)
TVMs combine modern cash management features, secure contactless payments processing and account-based smart card processing. This provides a comprehensive revenue management back office, designed to seamlessly integrate with a range of legacy, current and future transit technologies. TVMs provide the foundation for a fully-integrated faring system that will simplify payments for all parties in the future.
Open Payment Systems
Revenue from mobile payments solutions in the U.S. and EU is growing at staggering 42% per year.
The three main benefits for public transit agencies to consider around open payment systems are improved customer satisfaction, the gleaning of valuable business intelligence, or BI, from integrated payments data (see below) and substantial cost savings vs. mechanical systems (in terms of both fraud mitigation and reduced maintenance costs).
Secure Collection Methods
If you want to be secure, you might want to stay away from magnetics. Contactless systems are infinitely more secure for a variety of reasons (tougher to reproduce, they do not degrade or breakdown, etc.) Implementing contactless systems comes with a one-time expense, yes. But this capital expense will be more than offset by ongoing operational savings.
Data Integration
Modern agencies need fast and simple access to both direct fare data and other relevant information, such as stop level data gathered via on-board sensors and communicated vs. Intelligent Transit Systems (ITS). This is critical to power the BI behind fares and rider behavior that agencies need to improve service and gain operating efficiencies.
This is a critical time for agencies to evolve their fare collection solutions in advance of a time when what are now “nice to have” fare collection solutions become the de facto form of fare payments. We dig deeper in our eBook - Future of Fare Collection. Don't miss out!
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